Congressional ag leaders still working on farm bill

Farm and Ranch November 7, 2011 Congressional Agriculture Committee leaders are still working to come up with a farm bill for the deficit reduction super committee that has 23 billion dollars in cuts over ten years.

House Ag Ranking Committee member Collin Peterson says a lot of the bill is done, it is the commodity title that is the hold up.

Peterson: “To some extent it is hung up because of the interaction of these programs with crop insurance. And one of the things we agreed on early on there were going to be no cuts to crop insurance and whatever we ended up doing wouldn‘t undermine crop insurance. That is difficult to do. If you are going to do a revenue program it is going to have some interaction with crop insurance, probably.”

Then there are regional differences and what Peterson calls an entitlement mentality.

Peterson: “Where we have this money and it belongs to us. We have to get away from that. In this climate we can‘t justify a program that is going to pay people when they don‘t need it or is going to pay people based on something that they don‘t do anymore. That has gotten us into trouble. We have to get away from it. I want to make sure cotton has an effective safety net. I want to make sure peanuts and rice have an effective safety net, as well as wheat, barley, oats, corn and soybeans. That is the goal not cotton has this much money now, therefore they should always have that much money.”

Peterson believes the Ag Committee leaders will agree on something.

I’m Bob Hoff on Northwest Aginfo Net.

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